Archive for the Guest Review Category


Yuri Manga:Teito Takoyaki Musume – Taisho Yakyuu Musume Extra Story Manga, Guest Review by Bruce P (帝都たこ焼き娘。―大正野球娘。番外編 )

March 22nd, 2012

My favorite day of the week has arrived – Guest Post Day! Once again we welcome back Okazu Superhero and Friend of Yuricon, Bruce P! It’s always a treat when he writes a review, so let’s curl up somewhere comfy and have a read, shall we?

The year is 1925, and the Oukakai have shown that they can compete with the boys head-to-head at the game of baseball. Their self-confidence has grown through their own efforts in the dust and sweat of the playing field. But now the games are over, and Suzukawa Koume is back to her normal school activities: attending classes; studying English; causing other girl’s hearts to bang like marimbas. All the while inexplicably losing the self-confidence she’s just acquired, as though never having lifted her spikes to break up a double play.

Teito Takoyaki Musume is a manga sequel to Taisho Yakyu Musume. In one sense this is a pleasure, as the members of the Oukakai baseball club are a set of characters worth spending time with. On the other hand, the original Taisho Yakyu Musume is a wonderfully self-contained story, for which a sequel could easily seem a cranked-out franchise extender. In Teito Takoyaki Musume you can hear the gears.

Koume is back to the books, but finds that she is pathetically behind everyone in schoolwork. Kawashima-san is obsessed with Koume, and with keeping her on the path of academic progress. But she is confronted at every turn by Tomoe, whose interest is in keeping Koume happy, progress be damned. These three make the triangle that impels the story. Interestingly, Akiko is relegated to a relatively minor role. Frustrated by Tomoe’s cool competence, Kawashima-san is desperate for any advantage, so she contacts her stylish, look-alike Kansai cousin Momiji for assistance. Bad idea. Momiji’s a handful, and unexpectedly appears in the Chancellor’s office to make cutting remarks about, of all pertinent things, Tokyo cuisine, and the poor comportment of Tokyo schoolgirls, whom she has observed acting most unbecomingly – she had encountered Koume and Tomoe sharing dango (you know… ‘Say aaaan’) on a rendezvous in Shinjuku. Well, the crisis is now truly at hand. Tempers rise. Anna-sensei takes control by proposing that the Tokyo and Osaka schools settle their culinary differences by engaging in a ‘food stall battle’ to determine who’s cuisine reigns, um, tastier.

The remainder of the story involves the Oukakai attempting to develop a recipe that will be a winner, or at least something that doesn’t cause them to gag, which takes a surprising number of pages. They learn about food stalls, and street food – how to eat soba noodles, an uncouth activity, which Anna-sensei demonstrates with immodest pleasure. They eventually hit on a recipe for Tokyo takoyaki, predating the actual development of this Kansai specialty by about ten years. On the big day Koume is paralyzed by yet another attack of self-doubt – and with Prozac so darn far in the future, too. But at last with support from her friends she succeeds in making wonderfully aromatic takoyaki that delight the festival crowd. Though not before Kyouko has had to dash off to find some necessary ingredients… if only she can make it back in time… she does. It’s all very dramatic. But victory still hangs in the balance until Tomoe and Shizuka surprise everyone by doing a Takarazuka thing, arriving in a large box, gotten up as a pair of living dolls (male and female) to attract the customers.

Lyndon Johnson won election to the senate in 1948 by flying around Texas in a helicopter yelling down at the gathering crowds. Nothing beats spectacle to draw the saps, and after the living doll show the game is over. Momiji has no choice but to concede defeat. But only to offer the Okaitai a further challenge – on the baseball field.

There is more Yuri in this volume than in either the anime or the quirky, original Shimpei Itoh manga (the very Shimpei Itoh manga – U-boats and rocket launchers and aluminum bats). Koume is surrounded by adoring fans, enough that at one point even she has to ask why so many of the girls like her so much (akogare). An excellent question. Her quivering lack of confidence in all things is unbecoming and very annoying. Tomoe on the other hand is poised, cold and intelligent. But she melts with happiness when alone with Koume, on a date or when they share a futon. Happy couple #2 – Yuki and Tama-chan – also share a futon during the same overnight. Yuki has orchestrated the entire evening, from the partner selection (which sounds less innocent than it is) to the insufficient supply of futons. Tama-chan doesn’t mind. Throughout, Anna-Sensei and Kawashima-san are drawn to each other; it’s an intellect thing, but if they were a lot closer in age it’s not hard to guess that Anna-sensei’s kiss would have been a little less maternal. And then there’s Momiji’s cross-dressing pal Sakura, looking good in shirtsleeves, suspenders, and knickerbockers, who takes a special interest in Koume at first sight.

In Teito Takoyaki Musume the Yuri is gentle but fun. The story, though, seems artificial and the drama forced. But the real let down is that, rather than striving to accomplish something wildly unprecedented, which no one believes they can do, or even thinks they should attempt, the girls are… cooking. And fretting about it.

Ratings:

Art: 5 Adequate, but only. There are some odd proportions on occasion.
Story: 5 Artificial. Hey everyone, let’s put on a play!!
Characters: 8 A great ensemble.
Yuri: 6 Cheerful and sweet.
Service: 0

Overall: 6

I have to admit I like series set in the Taisho era – Sakura Taisen also comes to mind (at least to my mind). It’s not nostalgia, I don’t remember crystal sets and scarlet fever, but the mix of old and new is intriguing.

Thank you again, Bruce. I have only one question, Service – 0? Really? ^_^





Yuri Game: don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story, Guest Review by Mara)

October 14th, 2011

This is not so much a “Yuri Game” as a “Game with Yuri Elements” but that makes a clunky review header. Anyway, it is my very sincere pleasure to welcome back Guest Reviewer Mara, with another great game review!~ 

don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story is the newest game from creator Christine Love, who has also written Digital: A Love Story. The narrator is John, an arguably pathetic guy who is at least smart enough to be aware of it. John has just started teaching literature at a high school that has its own internal social network called Amie.

As a teacher, John is allowed access to his students’ profiles and messages, both public and private and is flat out told to monitor them at his discretion.  This is not just a plot element but worked into how we, as readers, experience the story. As the central narrative moves forward, all of the characters are messaging and posting in time with the main story, whether they are present in the scene or not.

Every time someone in the class posts, the player is alerted to it and can read the posts in a submenu. This gives the central characters a powerful sense of constant presence. Even if the main story leaves these characters behind; we still see them talking to each other and posting their status. This device was the selling point in the story for me as it really hammers home the fact that the main narration is just John’s incomplete view. By reading the students’ posts we are privy to their opinions on how the story unfolds, and we can see the gradual bubbling of incidents yet to happen.

It is through this mechanism that we learn of the first Yuri subplot in don’t take it personally. Two of John’s students, Kendall and Charlotte, have just broken up – apparently in a major way – and we see some of the residual fallout of this in the messaging that occurs right at the beginning of the game.  The online communication we see also highlights an important difference between Kendall and Charlotte. While Charlotte is pretty much the same in person as she is online (sensible, accepting and polite) Kendall is a loud witty troll online, but very subdued in person when John first meets her. It is only after the breakup story concludes that it becomes clear that Kendall’s perkiness begins to shift back into her offline persona.

One particular story route does deal with Kendall and Charlotte directly and the possibility of them getting back together. The result is something incredibly adorable in that teenage “this moment is the most important ever” sort of way. Although I did occasionally cringe at attempts to give the characters a unique voice; there was a sense of the raw emotional immediacy that seems to plague teenage life that felt truly genuine in how Kendall and Charlotte’s relationship played out.

However, Kendall and Charlotte are not the only Yuri draw in this game; there is another couple who, although they have much less exposure (John only meets one of them), were the couple that made the game for me. They are the mothers of Akira, another of John’s students, Ichigo and Hazuki.

Akira’s early story deals with him coming out to his friends and peers, having realised for himself very recently that he is gay. It is a sequence that is pretty much free of drama as everyone’s reply is ‘I already assumed so, ages ago’. This irritates Akira, as for him finding out he was gay was an important event and a powerful moment of self discovery…only to find that everyone else had already assumed it.

This is compounded for Akira, as his mother Hazuki by comparison, has a coming out story that spans a year with subplots, themes and a cast too big to fit on the stage. Although this and one other mention is all we get to know about Hazuki, we still get a solid flavour as to what her character is. That, and she induces intergenerational coming out envy in her son, which is just awesome.

We do get to meet Ichigo, in full mama-wolf mode during the end of a sequence where Akira is harassed by another character. Ichigo is straight to the point about the problem and refreshingly appropriate and direct. She also appears in the scene wearing a very dashing suit. I do have to say it is nice to see a mother turn up to protect her son and not be shown as a hysterical protective monster. Instead, Ichigo comes off as perfectly sensible especially, after she turns up again in the resolution of the main story to sort everything out and is instrumental in a very well-written big reveal.

don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story is a short visual novel. You can get through all the routes within a few hours. However, with both the offline and online world to read, it feels like a truly packed experience. The rhythm that builds up though each chapter allows the important points of each event to be easily digested, like lightly fried dumplings. The art is pleasant, although inconsistent, as two artists split the tasks, meaning that the art for the event cg and the profile pictures have a different feel than the sprites.

I am very willing to forgive this and indeed a few other flaws in don’t take it personally. Why? Well considering this was made for the most part by one person, who put it out for free, and I never felt for a moment that the effort put on this project dropped. don’t take it personally was easily more interesting and is more engaging than games I have bought for eight thousand yen (looking at you Yukkuri Panic and Koihime Musou.) To see such talent and effort available for free is truly humbling.

In conclusion, I seriously recommend this for two good reasons. It is entertaining and free. You cannot go wrong with that.

So:
Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 9
Yuri – 9
Yaoi- 9
Service – 6

Overall – 9 (Hey, big achievements mean a lot to me)

What are you still doing here? :  : Go and read the visual novels of Christine Love!

Erica here; Mara, thank you so much for bringing this game to our attention! (That’s the “we” of the Yuri Network, not the royal “We.”) ^_^

The game sounds like it’s fun and your review might even get me to try it. 

Just a quick note: There will be no YNN Report this week. I’m at New York Comic Con (Table 1158, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund!) and won’t have access to a keyboard and I’ll be damned if I try to write the YNN on a phone….





Tetsudou Shoujo Manga (鉄道少女漫画 ), Guest Review by Bruce P

June 1st, 2011

 It’s been a pretty busy week here, so thankfully, we have not one, but two Guest Reviews lined up. Today we welcome back Guest Reviewer, Okazu Superhero, Friend of Yuri, one of my chief lackeys and all-around terrific guy, Bruce P for a much-anticipated review of a manga I enjoyed the hell out of. ^_^ Take it away, Bruce!

Trains and girls. Outside of the manga world there would seem to be little natural affinity between the two. But as a walk through Comiket will show, surprising and unlikely combinations like this are the stuff of stacks and stacks of doujinshi: U.S. Green Beret uniforms and girls, for example, or British Royal Navy uniforms and girls, or (moving to another aisle) electrical power generating equipment and girls, World War II tanks and girls, and so on. What a cool world it is, when you can have your favorite fetish posed enjoying your other favorite fetish, reality notwithstanding. It’s all somewhat reminiscent of a machine shop calendar. A large number of such hobby-combination series are now appearing as manga or being made into anime; manga that combine trains and girls are among them. Most are not very wonderful, but Tetsudo Shoujo Manga (鉄道少女漫画 ) by Nakamura Asumiko is an exception. It is excellent – and it includes Yuri, as any excellent manga should.

The manga consists of five independent stories and an epilogue, all marginally connected by railroad settings. Three of the stories have run in Rakuen le Paradis. One of them is Yuri. They are Josei in style, and generally involve the exploration of troubled relationships. While a relentless series of troubled relationships might sound like the makings of a long afternoon, Nakamura-sensei brilliantly balances the tone with humor, which derives mostly from her artwork. Her comic timing is spot-on.

The non-Yuri chapters are an interesting mix, taking place at different railway stations, on trains, or in one case at a secret model railway club. Just a single example: A woman is riding a train on the Odakyu Railway line to Hakone as she runs away from her husband. He’s a schlub, and she’s sick of acting as both mother and housemaid to the guy. She has the understanding and assistance of his younger brother. Unknown to them, however, the husband is not far behind, just one car back. He catches a young pickpocket with her hand on his wallet and compels her to assist in his plan for revenge: writing the character ‘meat’ on his wife’s forehead. And you wonder why she is running.

After confronting the fleeing woman and younger brother, the husband gives up and runs off the train. But the pickpocket shames him for being such a jerk, and tells him to get back in there and fight, and by the way don’t be such a jerk. The train is gone, but thanks to the pickpocket’s detailed knowledge of the timetable (a natural result of her livelihood), she gets him onto an express that allows them to catch up. They are helped by the fact that she lifted the younger brother’s wallet, and he and the wife are now stuck, unable to leave the station. They all meet up, husband promises to reform, and the couple shares a tearful reconciliation. Younger brother can now turn his attention to the cute young pickpocket – and since he is an Odakyu station agent out of uniform, they will have a lot to talk about.

The Yuri story (“Rittai Kousa no Eki”) starts with Mizuho on a station platform annoyed by a violent argument a woman is having on her phone. Mizuho descends to a lower platform only to be targeted by the woman’s falling phone and bag, knocked from her flailing hands by a passing train. Mizuho, a pitcher on her school baseball team, nonchalantly throws the bag all the way back up, instantly attracting the deep interest of the woman (who is never named). Mizuho has no chance to return the phone before catching her train, and on opening it she is intrigued by the background photo of the woman being kissed by another woman. When they meet on the platform the next day she hands back the phone and is embarrassed to admit seeing the photo. Not a problem, the woman says, they are breaking up anyway, hence the screaming. Mizuho realizes she can talk to the woman, even if only in oblique terms, about her own issue – a teammate is in love with Mizuho, but Mizuho does not love her back. The best thing would be to turn her down, the woman advises, eyes practically glittering. As the woman helps Mizuho, she in turn helps the woman, finding a ring that had dropped from the bag, the loss of which was causing a lot of yelling between the ex-lovers. At the point of the woman’s deepest funk over the breakup, Mizuho proposes in a somewhat blatant metaphor that the woman might want to take a different track toward a new destination – pointing to the line she herself rides. Cautiously jumping on the metaphor, the woman, contemplating how much younger Mizuho is, asks if it would really be OK (Can I use my Suica pass card on that line?) to which Mizuho answers firmly yes (Of course! It’s a JR line!). Love by semaphore.

A short part 2 finds the woman attending a game where Mizuho is pitching, which makes Mizuho so nervous she gets shellacked. Dreadfully embarrassed, she breaks that night’s date for extended practice, but finds the woman still waiting when she gets done. It is a relationship that is taking off nicely. The woman can be very sweet when she is not violently angry; one has to hope for the best here.

The epilogue chapter pulls all the threads together – and lets them go again. A man rides from Shinjuku to Enoshima, then Chigasaki, Atsugi, and Iriuda, all locations from previous chapters. Along the way he observes with bored half-interest the characters from the previous chapters in fleeting, unconnected vignettes, popping in and out of his sight like fireflies on a summer evening. He sees Mizuho rushing in concern to meet her lover on the station platform, where she asks the woman about some minor injury. And then he moves on. A quiet ending to an enjoyable manga.

Ratings:

Art: 8 Josei style with some cheerfully distorted proportions. Sparkling with humor. The art pulls the stories from merely interesting to exceptional.

Characters: 7 The characters are not all likeable. The men in particular tend to be either morose or cranky. A set of character types that sit around a model railroad in one chapter are precise, if unkind, portrayals of creepiness. By way of balance the pickpocket is such a great character; she deserves more stories.

Stories: 7 Ranging from almost strictly dramatic to humorous. Not overwhelming, but all showing some interesting angles.

Yuri: Rittai Kousa no Eki: 8 Other chapters: 0

Service: No. Not even for the one panty shot.

Yuri/Train Fan: I liked it.

Overall: 8

Tetsudou Shoujo Manga is a wonderful example of a ‘hobby’ manga that manages to keep the hobby part under firm control. Nakamura-sensei obviously loves trains, is happy drawing Yuri, and that combination works very nicely for me.

Erica here: Bruce – she keeps it under control, except in the model-building chapter, don’t you think? That story was a wank, but it was, ultimately, harmless. I also would give this series an 8, even if I am not a train enthusiast . Thanks, as always for the review. It’s such a pleasure to read your perspective. ^_^





Bustician Manga, Guest Review by Bruce P

March 20th, 2011

Erica here. I’m busy chauffeuring Rica Takashima today to the Dykes Draw the Line slide show and discussion at the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and with news, both good and bad, we’ve had few reviews here in the past week. Today we have one of those ever-so-special treats when a Guest Reviewer jumps in to save me from losing my mind and you from having to go a single day without wit and/or wisdom from Okazu. Today it is my very special pleasure to welcome back Okazu superhero, one of my dear friends and best lackeys, Bruce P. with what I promise is a very witty and wise review….

Breasts.

Just practicing. Its a word that will be used an awful lot in this review.

To begin addressing the manga Bustician (バステティシャン) by Oshima Towa, it is useful to refer to an earlier review by Erica of Gokujouu, in which that manga was described as ‘a more nudity-filled, more pervtastic, even MORE stupid version of the same exact set of gags in High School Girls…if Kouda was the lead character.’ Oshima Towa, author of High School Girls, apparently is not one to let such a challenge in the arena of plummeting taste go unanswered. Unfortunately with Bustician she succeeds brilliantly, plumbing the depths of bad burlesque in a fundamentally bizarre manga that centers entirely on the female breast. Incidentally, the term ‘plumbing’ was brought to mind by the manga itself, see below (‘plumber’s helper’).

The word Bustician is a contraction of bust aesthetician, an expert in breast aesthetics. Kokoa and Mami are new busticians working in the salon Bustnia. They are under the tutelage of the lovely and poised Sarasa, and are rivals for her affection (actually, they are less interested in the affection than in the groping, but we’ll get to that). Bustnia is a breast salon. Women who are unhappy with their breasts are treated to various massages and non-surgical treatments to augment, diminish, reshape, or otherwise change them. Each chapter involves a woman (or pair of women) who has a difficult relationship issue or career issue or self-image issue originating with their breasts and hopes that Salon Bustnia is the answer. These issues are serious concerns to the customers and obviously highly personal, but what we are treated to is a barrage of slapstick gags as the two new girls maltreat their customer’s breasts in painful, extended and explicit displays of nominally hilarious, clueless, Kouda-esque ineptitude. You would think the girls had never encountered a breast before. For breast augmentation cases Kokoa is always reaching for the vacuum cleaner. And yes, the plumber’s helper.

In fact Kokoa and Mami are girls only on the outside. They behave in every way like adolescent boys – presumably mirroring the intended audience. They are fascinated by breasts, excited to learn new things about them, unable to keep their hyperactive, groping hands off them. Their prime desire is to see Sarasa naked, and they get all nosebleedy on those occasions when it might just happen. You get the feeling that somewhere along the line they must have been hit on the head by one of those falling spaceships, and since their reconstruction as girls are now living a boy’s voyeuristic fantasy. On one page that will get you some interesting looks on the bus Kokoa is massaged by Sarasa and falls into a trancelike dream where she is lying in blushing, naked, orgasmic bliss in a bulging sea of elephantine breasts. This illustration takes up a full page, in the corner of which a chorus of smiling disembodied SD breasts are singing the happy breast song. You know, the one that goes ‘O, o, o, o, o–, oppai oppai oppai opapaai.’ Yeah, that one.

There is Yuri. Two of the employees have a relationship, one of whom, Asahi, is brought onto the case of the customer with the insensate breasts. Asahi’s explicitly sexual and obviously well practiced massage solves the woman’s problem, only to create another one: a hopeful repeat customer (it’s not that kind of salon, apparently, though it sure looks like it most of the time). A woman with large breasts wants to look more like a man when she is making love to her girlfriend (it turns out that her girlfriend likes her just the way she is.) Then there’s Kokoa’s and Mamai’s desire for Sarasa, but again, it’s more adolescent male lust than anything else.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Typical Oshima Towa, which is not bad. Her breast art is an adolescent’s dream. In this manga she had lots of practice.

Story – 2 Pain, embarrassment and interminable physical abuse can sustain a story only so far.

Characters – 4 It might seem like the customers deserve some sympathy, but they really don’t, because they rarely get up and pound the living crap out of Kokoa and Mami.

Yuri- 6 Some of the secondary characters are definite couples. Kokoa and Mami lust after Sarasa’s breasts. Put it all together and shake and OK, there’s some Yuri.

Service – 90 Breasts. Naked. Multiple. Massive. On every page. Without some of the women’s issues it could have been 91.

Overall – Oh, somewhere below 5. That the translucent first page that allows you to remove the negligee and reveal the breasts of a full color Kokoa actually sums it up pretty well.

Having enjoyed High School Girls, I would like to believe that Bustician was meant to be so unbelievably over-the-top, so tongue-in-cheek in its breast obsession that normal standards were sort of beside the point. But as in the case of Ernest Vincent Wright’s Gadsby from 1939 – a novel written without once using the letter ‘e’ – intense single-mindedness may be a source of amazement, but can make for a pretty lousy read.

Erica again: Hahahahahahahahahhahah

Better you than me, Bruce.





Gatch Gatcha Manga, Volume 8 (English) Guest Review by Sean Gaffney

December 21st, 2010

Gatcha Gacha Volume 8 I know it’s only Tuesday, but I’ve been sick the past few days, and so asked Sean to hustle and write me a guest review for today. And he did! So, once again, let’s welcome back Guest Reviewer, Sean Gaffney!

I’ve already reviewed Gatcha Gatcha, Volume 8 on my own blog, but since I had  previously done an overview of the series here in September 2008, I  thought that I would come back and dwell a bit on the more Yuri-friendly  aspects of the series as a whole.

First, a small digression. A lot of manga have sidebar comments  interspersed throughout the volumes. In the magazine, this is a place where the page was thinner so that an advertisement could be placed. For the volume, the publisher asks the artist to fills those spaces with original material to draw in a reader who may not want to buy something they already read in the pages of, say, Melody magazine. As readers of shoujo manga know, 90% of the time the material is the artist talking about what they ate, or where they shopped, or the awesome fellow manga artist they hung out with, or simply whining about how awful they are. And Yutaka Tachibana does this a bit too, no doubt. But she also discusses this series, and the choices she made.

She talks about Motoko, and how the editor asked for her more violent and lecherous tendencies to be toned down, but that Tachibana put her foot down. She also mentions Yuri, and said that she tried to make her a girl who’d only gone as far as kissing with her boyfriends, but felt Yuri worked better when she was ‘less pure’. More to the point, Tachibana wrote this manga ‘doing what she felt like’, and decided to simply dispense with most of the shoujo romance most series demand. Volume 8 gives us a good idea of why – it doesn’t fit the characters at mall. At least not the female characters. Yuri spends most of this volume trying to get herself to fall out of love with Yabe and in love with Hirao. She certainly does have some feelings for Hirao, and notes that she’d be jealous if she saw him with another girl. But she doesn’t get him. When she finally goes on a date with him – a very awkward one – she senses stares coming from the other females in the room, and worries that they all see Hirao as some ’empty-headed bimbo’. Later, seeing him blushing after eating a bite of her food, she compares him to… a princess.

Role reversal is the order of the day throughout this volume. Yuri dreams of being rescued from a snowy mountaintop by a ‘prince’ whose face she can’t quite make out. It’s clearly Motoko, but she hasn’t yet connected those dots. Later, she and Hirao are captured by the evil gang leader who’s been trying to make everyone’s life miserable this whole series. She then decides to disguise herself as Hirao and take the abuse and torture of her captors so that he can escape. Yuri is supposed to be the blushing shoujo heroine, only she simply can’t fall into those lines.

Neither does Motoko. Her main character arc wrapped up in Book 7, so here she simply does what she does best – makes insensitive yet telling remarks and beats up tons and tons of people. Much of this is a facade, of course – we’ve seen how much Motoko cares for Yuri, and she’s been trying to get her and Hirao to stumble towards each other almost from Day One. It’s not working, though, and clearly Yuri’s happiness is more important to her than she ever expected – Sekine understands this when he asks in a prior volume how she feels about Yuri and Hirao, and Motoko blankly replies “Dunno.”

So the climax of the series is, of course, Motoko coming to Yuri’s rescue, not Hirao. And in the final scene, we see Motoko finally at peace with herself. Her big sister is back, but seems to have lost the obsession with Motoko that led to jealous insanity. Motoko even cut her hair again, now that she doesn’t have to be ‘girly’ to ward off Kanako’s affections. And Yuri notices, saying that Motoko looks cool and makes her heart skip a beat. Now, Motoko had flirted with Yuri in a joking way several volumes earlier, but this comment seems to pull her up short. Then she just smiles and says “You bet I do.” This is lampshaded by the author, who has Sekine noting to Hirao while this is going on that Hirao has to win Yuri quickly and keep her or else he’ll lose her. But then the final line of the author’s narration is “Then again… maybe it’s already too late?”

The author already mentioned she stood her ground on keeping Yuri and Motoko the flawed yet far more awesome characters they were. More to the point, most of the time she didn’t go for the easy out, or the typical plot. The narrative, from the start, clearly was about the meeting and subsequent friendship of these two girls. And the two guys co-starring were shown, over and over, to be fairly weak and ineffectual, no matter what was done to toughen them up. As a result,
when it’s implied Yuri and Motoko get together at the end, this isn’t a surprise. It’s what the series has been working towards.

Ratings:

Art – 6. Still can get busy and confusing, especially during action scenes.

Story – 7. There are some cliches here, don’t get me wrong, but I liked the way the author stuck to her guns much of the time.

Characters – 9. Fantastic, especially the females. Even the psycho incestuous sister, Kanako, gets a depth rarely seen in psycho incestuous sisters.

Yuri (no, not the character): 5. It can still be read as hypothetical, but you’d have to squint, especially with the final pages.

Servicey – 2. There’s not a heck of a lot of service here.

Overall: 8. A highly underrated series from Tokyopop, and I’m pleased that it is finally finished. Definitely worth the effort to find it.

Also, the inside cover picture has Motoko wearing a fedora while snuggling Yuri. Fedoras make everyone sexier.